Astrid hated Sebastian.
In fact, she had never despised an unconscious person more. Especially one who was sprawled across her mattress and muttering in his sleep about Abel and his ma and someone named Carissénas.
How pathetic.
Not to mention the boy thought her to be a complete imbecile. His whole doe-eyed innocent facade of 'What magic? Who has it? Me?' was an act that Astrid refused to accept. She had seen his magic, had even felt it as it nearly brought down the entire tunnel underneath the fortress around their heads.
Her tunnels.
So, yes, Sebastian—if that was his true name—had elemental magic, and his unfathomable control over it caused Astrid to want to punch him where he lay. His control was too strong for him to pretend not to know about it, and the longer he tossed and turned before her, the more envious Astrid felt herself become.
Jealous of a fisher's boy from the insignificant village of Eilibir.
Bitter that he could potentially accomplish what she could not.
Astrid felt like hitting him again.
She watched his fingers twitch against her sheets. The wristcuffs she had placed to bind his hands clinked. Astrid could feel his elemental threads twining around her own as it writhed against her control over them. Destructive. Yes, this magic-leeching thief of a boy would be destructive, Astrid knew it, could feel it. And yet...she still sat in the chair beside her bed and watched him sleep. He was a rather restless dreamer. She supposed she could have called upon his Spirit's thread and awoken him.
But then what?
The thought coiled in her stomach.
When she realized it was actually fear that festered there, Astrid growled into the silence of her chambers. Gritting her teeth, she roused her magic, gathered it into her fingertips, and prodded him, none-too-gently, in the ribs.
Sebastian startled awake with a gasp that stuck in his throat and sent him sputtering.
Astrid rolled her eyes. "So, Prince Charming awakens, it seems."
Sebastian jerked against the headboard, his eyes a dark green when they fell upon her. They were still muddled with sudden consciousness. "No, I—" He touched the side of his head and winced. "I'm not a prince."
"That much is obvious." Astrid made sure that he noticed the dagger she flipped idly between her fingers. "It's called dramatic irony."
"No, it isn't. I don't think that's what you meant—"
Astrid flung the knife. It flipped hilt over end until it stuck into the wood of her headboard, directly above his mass of curly hair. His mouth shut as she braced her elbows on the edge of the mattress.
"I would think you have more pressing concerns than arguing academia terminology."
With a predatory sneer, she leaned closer. He cowered back into the pillows as she stretched over him. She could have sworn his breaths stuttered when she retrieved her knife, plucking it out from above him.
"After all," she continued, "you have just woken up in my bed while muttering the names of other women. Perhaps you're not so charming after all."
She grinned when Sebastian's eyes narrowed, two blooms of color seeping into his brown cheeks. "Where am I? Are these the barracks of the guards?"
A laugh nearly escaped her. If he thought her royal chambers were the barracks, he had no hope of ever figuring out her truth. "That doesn't necessarily matter."
"What do you want with me?"
"With you?" Astrid tilted her head. "Nothing. It's what I want from you that matters." She resumed flipping the knife over her knuckles, pleased when his eyes followed the movements. "I want your elemental threads."
Sebastian's fingers clenched around the sheets. "I've already told you, I don't—"
Astrid ignored this. "Perhaps I phrased that incorrectly. I do not want your magic; I want to know how you came to have it."
Her lips pursed when he met her piercing gaze with a simmering fire of his own. "I would think that you, more than anyone, would understand that Scribal magic is nothing but a myth," he said.
"What do you mean by that?"
She watched as he straightened against her headboard and pushed his wayward hair out of his eyes. If he wore spectacles, she was sure he would be sliding them up his nose. "Well, it was your queen who fought against Soleita in the Purge, wasn't it? Queen Davina fought against the academy, for they had set out to deceive the kingdom with their alchemical tricks into believing they held such mystical power. They would have taken over all the realms with the fear their fake magic instilled. Queen Davina exposed their lies. She was a realist."
"Rubbish." Astrid barely refrained from snorting. "That is utter nonsense."
He gaped at her. "Nonsense? Hardly! It's history."
"Well, it is not the right one." She watched the confusion pull at his expression and saw the frustration held tautly in the cords of his neck. It was sincere enough that Astrid lay her knife on top of her thigh. "You truly believe that? That elemental magic doesn't exist?"
"It's what I know."
She crossed her legs and sat back against the chair, studying him. She knew the general populace believed what Sebastian did about their history because, as far as they understood, magic didn't exist. Had never existed. But Astrid had been born with the elements; she had grown up with the truth. And this boy, he held that power, too. If this was all an act of his, then she would have to admit it was an annoyingly flawless one. As someone who had spent most of her life behind a facade, Astrid knew how to expose one. It was infuriating to realize she couldn't crack his. This fisherboy couldn't be that good, could he? Surely not good enough to best even herself.
Then again, Zev and Serah knew of him. The Scribe had confirmed his existence.
How were they connected?
Astrid frowned at him. "Queen Davina is not a realist. She's a preservationist." She leaned back towards him. "What were your parents' names?"
He licked his lips, his expression falling further. "Amos and Imogene Aximos."
"And they're the ones who taught you the ancient tongue of the Scribes?"
His throat bobbed. "My ma," he said. "She taught me when I was very young. She was always a hopeful mystic, though. It hardly proves magic is factual."
Astrid pulled the page she had ripped from the Monverta from her pocket and held it out to him. The dark scarlet words bled through the paper: voíxili, voíxili, voíxili.
"Translate this."
He glanced from her to the paper in her hands. "You've shown me this before."
"I did."
"It—" His curious gaze trailed over the loops of the letters—"It felt crushing."
"So I have noticed." Impatient, she snapped her fingers. "Read it."
For a tense, short moment, Astrid was sure the only sound came from her blood pumping from her heart to her veins. Thump, thump, thump. Hope. It beat in time to the rake of his hazel eyes over each of the scrawled, ancient letters.
"I can't be certain," he finally said. "This isn't a common word. I could roughly translate it as 'release,' though the accent's strangely curved for such a translation."
Disappointment consumed her. Astrid sank back into her chair, stuffing the parchment back into her trousers. Release. Ugh. Useless. She had already known that bit. She had hoped it would have told her how to release it.
But why would the Monverta have given it to her?
Seabass cleared his throat. "When you said Queen Davina was a preservationist, what did you mean? A preservationist of what?"
"Me." She touched the cuff around her arm without thought. "And you, I suppose."
Further questions built up behind those curious eyes of his, but she cut him off before he could voice them. "It will be easier to show you." She held her hands out before her. "But if you move so much as a hair's breadth, I will have you dangling from the cliff of this mountain without so much as lifting my littlest finger—" Not really. With the cuff, it would probably kill her—"Understand, fisherboy?"
He crossed his arms. "I'm not a fisherman."
"I don't particularly care."
"Fine." His sigh was weary as if he desperately wished to curse at her but was far too polite. Oh, she was going to absolutely break him. "What do you plan on showing me? I've already seen your dagger. And manacles. Is it more Scribal words?"
On second thought, perhaps he would break her. Forget dying by overexertion, his constant questions would be the death of her.
She closed her eyes to shut him out and burrowed.
His magic stirred in response, and she dove deeper towards her own. The cuff clamped tightly around her arm in an attempt to stop her, to warn her, but she had long since learned to deal with the pain. Astrid's thoughts twirled with her awakening elemental threads.
Seabass shifted awkwardly, no doubt, as Astrid reached for the threads. Nothing Sebastian had claimed about her mother made any historical sense; the Scribes hadn't been trying to spread fake magic during the Purge; they had been stealing Rainier's elemental magic. The kingdom's natural connection to the threads that Goddess Elayn, the mother of Earth, breathed.
Eilibir's education must truly be as rank as the rotten fish smell she imagined permeated that poor village.
In actuality, however, it had to do with the memory loss enacted by the Purge.
Astrid preferred her rotten fish theory, for it was far more dramatic.
She yanked on the threads of her slumbering magic too forcefully and hissed against the burning heat that ignited from her elbow down to her fingers.
Sebastian yelped in pain from the bed.
Control. She tried to breathe evenly through her nose and pushed her magic out of herself to connect with the droplets of water in the vase on her mantle. After all, if Sebastian truly had no belief in elements and yet had such strong control over it, she should be able to manage at least this much. I control you.
Unfortunately, she tended to demand control a tad too vigorously. She jerked when a drop of water fell from the ceiling and splashed across her nose. Astrid opened her eyes and looked up.
"Dammit."
The water from the vase hovered in a bulbous bubble over the edge of the bed, its elemental threads wavering before her like the tides of a sea. But it wasn't the only threads of water her connection had pulled upon. Liquid seeped through the cracks of the mountainous walls and floors, dripping from the rock ceiling onto Astrid's and Sebastian's heads. Sebastian's cheeks paled as he stared in disbelief at the suspended water orb before him.
Astrid gritted her teeth and attempted to reign the threads back in. Two drops splashed across her brow.
Then three more.
Oops.
"How are you doing this?" Sebastian reached out a shaky hand to touch the orb of water in front of his shocked face—
Astrid's bedroom door flung open.
It slammed into the opposite wall with a noise almost as abrupt as the voice that followed it. "Where in the names of the bleeding seven realms have you been?"
Matthias stormed in, his captain's helmet tucked under his arm. Astrid swore and lost her control completely. In a mighty gush, water fell around the room, dousing everything and everyone with a fine, damp mist. Sebastian spluttered as the bubble popped directly into his disbelieving expression, plastering his black hair to his forehead.
An unwanted laugh burst from Astrid's throat.
Matthias zeroed in on the wet boy in her bed and rounded on Astrid with a fury she had never seen before.
"Your plans are death."
Astrid shrugged as innocently as she could manage with water dripping off her nose. "I had everything well in hand before you interrupted."
Matthias looked from Sebastian, to the damp sheets, to the ends of Astrid's dripping hair. He grunted derisively and, in two angry strides, was at Sebastian's side, a fist clamped between the cuffs shackled to the boy's wrists. He pinned Astrid with a patronizing expression. She knew what he wanted to ask but wouldn't dare ask it aloud in present company: Does he know?
Astrid shook her head. Of course, she hadn't told the fisherboy she was Queen Davina's daughter! "I'm not completely incompetent, you know."
Matthias snarled. "And yet you brought this—" he rattled the chain that connected Sebastian's two wristcuffs—"here, to the fortress? Curse the skies that gave you such delusional ideas!"
Astrid raised herself from the chair, but it was Sebastian who coughed and said, "I'm not a possession."
Caught off guard, Matthias hesitated. Actually hesitated. It was with great amusement that Astrid watched as his light brows bunched in the center of his forehead.
"What in the name of Goddess Elayn does that mean?"
It was difficult for Astrid to decide whether she should smirk at or hit Sebastian. She settled for a combination of both. "Can you now understand why I wanted to keep his irritating presence a secret? I wished to preserve the sanity of those in this fortress. I was thinking of you, Thias."
Matthias's scowl deepened. "Yes, because you're so altruistic." He yanked on Sebastian's wrists, hauling him off the bed. "The boy's under my jurisdiction now."
"Jurisdiction?" Sebastian muttered. "This is hardly a court of law.'"
Both Astrid and Matthias ignored him. Astrid placed her hands on her hips, pulling her spine as straight as an arrow. "He is right. You have no such authority, Captain Soiree."
"Neither do you," he countered, unintimidated. "He will be handed over to Her Majesty."
What color was left on Sebastian's ashy skin bled from his damp face. "I promise I'm not so important."
Sebastian's gaze flickered back to Astrid. Their eyes met, and she found her feet moved instinctually. Somehow, she slid her way between the two of them, shoved Sebastian back a step, and then wrapped her fingers around one of Matthias's thick wrists. She did her best to soften her gaze.
"Matthias," she said, "please. Be reasonable. He can do what I can and that shouldn't be possible—"
"I can't do anything," Sebastian countered. "Truly. I'm from Eilibir and can't even fish properly."
Astrid whirled on him. "For the love of the skies, just stop talking!" She turned back to a tight-lipped Matthias, beseeching the careful lines of his stoic face. "I want answers for myself. Leave him with me. Just look at him! He's hardly a threat."
Matthias's jaw twitched, the pulse in his stiff neck pulsing steadily. His tone was terse as he twisted out of her hold. "You are a threat," he said. "If he can harness the same power, it makes him one as well."
The bones of Matthias's wrist ground together beneath the tight grip of her hand as she held onto him. He refused to flinch even though her heart stuttered painfully against her chest. "Thias, please. Choose me. Just this once."
Besides, she would take Sebastian to Davina. When she was ready, of course. First, there were answers she desperately wanted before her mother could manipulate them.
But when Matthias's expression shuttered, Astrid knew she had lost. Her hand fell from him as he inclined his head sharply. It was a mockery of a proper bow, but Astrid felt it like a slap.
"You are not my sovereign."
Without another glance her way, he yanked Sebastian backwards and pulled him by the cuffs to the door of her rooms.
Feeling oddly stunned, Astrid watched them leave, her fingers flexing at her sides. The magic in her gut thrashed in revolt against the emotions flooding her. In the vengeful depths of her soul, she knew she could have used elemental force against Matthias. She could have hurt him. Could have stopped him.
But would she have?
It frightened her to think she wouldn't have had the ability to do so.
Davina's words haunted her now empty room: "Your care for him caused you to lose control."
Dammit.
Her mother had been right.
_ _ _
Well, now it's finally getting interesting...Tune in next time to see Bash's interaction with Queen Davina. And just where is Abel, anyways? Hmmmm...
We appreciate your feedback and comments, so please take a moment to let us know what you think! Thank you so much!